Flops 003: The Hotel From Hell

Flops 003: The Hotel From Hell

Karen Beattie:
As Alanis Morrissette once said, “I recommend biting off more than you can chew to anyone.”

But there’s biting off more than you can chew, and there’s biting off way, way more than you can chew. There’s shooting for the moon and landing among the stars … with no fuel to get back home.

Take the story of Woolworth, for example.

1879 — Woolworth was started by Frank W. Woolworth in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The store was innovative for it’s time. It offered everything for 5 or 10 cents. If you’ve ever heard the term, “five and dime,” this is where it all started.

Woolworth was also innovative because it was one of the first stores to put merchandise on display out on the floor where customers could walk among the items, instead having to ask the store clerk for merchandise that was stored behind the counter.

The store was a hit.

By 1900, Woolworth had 59 locations and $5 million in sales.

By 1905 it had 120 locations and $10 million in sales.

And by in 1912, there were 596 stores and $52 million in sales that year, which was a lot of money back then!

Unfortunately, poor Frank died from a tooth infection just a few years later, in 1919. But the Woolworth company kept growing. By 1960 it had 1 billion in sales.

But by that time, the Five and Dime market started shrinking. Everyone wanted a department store that sold everything. So the Woolworth company launched its Woolco department stores, which never did very well. It was competing against Target, Kmart, and Walmart, all stores that were launched that same year.

Woolco wasn’t unique enough to have an edge. And by 1983, all of it’s locations closed in the U.S.

Woolworth also decided to take another risk, by expanding its real estate into malls and starting specialty stores: one which sold jewelry, another that sold sporting gear, and another which sold cold-weather wear. The company wanted to have 10 of these specialty stores in every mall in America.

This aggressive expansion contributed to its downfall. The recession of the early 1980s hit, and the company lost tons of money. It had stretched itself too thin, and the risks were not paying off. By the end of 1997, Woolworth closed its final 400 U.S. stores.

The original five and dime was no more.

The world of entrepreneurship and marketing is rife with guidance like If you aren’t risking it all, then why bother? You’re either sinking or you’re swimming.

But this kind of advice can also present a dangerous binary that obscures the potential downside of taking big risks.

In this episode of Flops, we hear from Tina Cheesley, an entrepreneur who, like the Woolworth company, stretched herself too thin in the real estate market, and whose vision and tenacity weren’t enough to overcome a failure to plan for the worst case.

Let’s hear her story, today on Flops.

Ray Sylvester:
Hey, welcome to Flops where we uncover what happens when business plans go up in smoke, and what we can learn from sifting through the ashes. I'm Ray and Karen's here too.

Karen:
Hey Ray.

Ray:
Hey.

Karen: Today we get to hear your interview with Tina Cheesley. She has an amazing story of failure, and this one is really epic.

Ray:
It is. Yes, we are going across the pond today to Bristol in the United Kingdom where Tina and her husband, Alan, have spent the last several years picking up the pieces from the collapse of a massive renovation project. They went from fixing up houses to essentially building a hotel. And there was, unfortunately, a lot that they failed to account for in making that big leap.

Karen:
Yes, there was. And this was right around the time of the great recession, right?

Ray:
There was that.

Karen:
Yeah. So real estate was booming, until it wasn't. So there were so many people who were devastated by the crash of the real estate market.

Ray:
Yes, and they were among them. Real estate was an especially precarious industry to be involved in, in the 2000s. And one of the other elements of this failure story is that Tina did really well in her home renovation business before they switched to this big commercial project, and sometimes getting a taste of success, like she did, can be like rocket fuel, especially when you're ambitious, like Tina is, as you'll learn. But a rocket launch is a very tricky thing to pull off. Everything has to be in perfect order or it's going to end up in disaster.

Karen: Sure. Yeah, but Tina is a really tenacious person, and her story has a lot of interesting twists and turns, so let's hear it.

Ray:
Hi, Tina. Welcome to Flops.

Tina Cheesley:
Thanks for having me.

Ray:
Yeah. Thanks for being here. Could you start by just telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Tina:
Okay. Well, my name's Tina and I have my own online marketing company with my husband. Actually, I've always worked with my husband. I've got two great girls, 22 and 17, and a lovely black lab. I enjoy mentoring others, but primarily my business is online marketing now.

Ray:
Gotcha. And how long have you and your husband been running that business?

Tina:
We've been running it together since 2002.

We work with all different types of businesses normally, from window companies to dentists to religious organizations. We do — well, I guess we started off building websites, email marketing. But now we do a lot of product launches for people.

Ray:
And you're based in Bristol, in the UK?

Tina:
Yes, that's correct. Yeah.

Ray:
Cool. And so you said that you've been self-employed pretty much your entire life or your entire career, is that right?

Tina:
My whole career. Yes. And I'm 51 now, so quite a while.

Ray:
Wow. Okay. So what, what else have you done? What other kinds of self-employment?

Tina:
Well, I was, working in a fam, more my family business, so I have a print background, so I started off in print. From there I then went into renovating houses. We set up our online marketing company around that same time and yeah, and then I moved into what my epic failure is.

Ray:
Yeah. And we're going to hear about that story today. But first I was just curious, like, what inspired you to embark on a career of self-employment — did you have like entrepreneur parents, or just what in your background kind of led you to take that kind of path?

Tina:
I think, when I was at college, my mum and a business partner had the business and I moved into that and I was just fascinated by the fact that you're in control of your own destiny. And I just really enjoyed working for myself. I never thought that I would work for someone else.

Ray:
Cool. Cool. And so tell me a little bit more about the print business. What exactly did that involve or does that involve?

Tina:
So that was obviously traditional print. I ran production, dealt with all of the clients. We had some great contracts. We used to do the BAFTA awards. But I got to the point where, where I just felt that ... one day I just woke up and I wasn't in love with it anymore.

Ray:
Did you have a plan in mind for what you were going to do next?

Tina:
Well, at the time, my eldest daughter was three years old and I knew that I always wanted to work. I just didn't have any more passion for it. I got fed up with deadlines. ‘Cause although I was self-employed I was at the beck and call of others. So a friend and I thought we might start renovating houses. We both had a flare for interior design. So we borrowed 8,000 pounds each on a credit card and set up our own business and started renovating houses.

And we were really, really successful. Our first house, which was a two bedroom flat, we renovated it, we styled it internally. So we decided that the person that would buy it would be a solicitor and we propped it accordingly, lifestyle-wise, and we made 30,000 pounds in four weeks.

So then we, before we set up a proper limited company, we tried it four more times to make sure that it wasn't a fluke and it wasn't. We had a really successful business for quite a long time.

Ray:
I mean it sounds like you've had, like you said, an interest in design, but like how did you bring all the other pieces together? Like, it sounds like a pretty complicated thing to do and to be so successful with right off the bat.

Tina:
It was just breaking it down into stages. My girls, when they used to ask me what, what I did, I just say I'd made sad houses happy. And it was just a process, and it was a really pleasurable process, taking something and turning it into something beautiful that you knew someone would want to buy.

Ray:
So let's talk about your, your leap from residential to commercial. When did you, or how did you get the notion that this was something, a transition that you wanted to make?

Tina:
I was obviously really successful at the houses, residential, and it got to the point where I thought I needed another challenge. I decided to privately educate my children, which was quite a big expense. And I thought if I could just do one big project that would cover their school fees, their tuition, right the way through to university, then I felt confident that I could do that. And we had a local airport nearby that was expanding and there was a large house in beautiful grounds that came up for sale. So with some partners, I thought, yes, let’s buy it. Let's turn it into a boutique hotel, set it up as a business. And that would be my cash cow.

Ray:
How many houses would that have been, would you have had to do to make the same amount of money that you would have on this commercial project?

Tina:
I would have probably had to have done 10 houses.

Ray:
So how long did it take you, before having the idea that you wanted to do this commercial project to actually getting started on it, getting all the pieces together?

Tina:
I'm quite tenacious and quite … when there's something to be done, I just don't give up. So within a very short time, I'd find partners that were able to fund what we couldn't fund. ‘Cause we couldn't do it on our own. And then it all happened quite quickly. And that was in 2006.

Ray:
Okay. So walk me through like, the first day of the project.

Tina:
Okay. So first day of the project was we bought a house that was, it was in two acres. It was an okay house. It needed quite a lot of work doing on it. So with everything in the UK, you have to get planning. So we planned, he had to have a change of use. So it was very much getting involved with the architects and all the pretty, the pretty stuff and drawing out the rooms and splitting up the property. So that, that probably took three months at the beginning of the project. And whilst we were doing that, we lined up funds to renovate with the partners. And we also, obviously we were setting up a new business as a boutique hotel, so we got everything ready around the practicalities of setting up a hotel as well.

Ray:
And so this was the commercial project, correct? Not your first house project. Okay. Gotcha. And, who were the partners that you, that you had to bring in?

Tina:
Somebody that I'd known through my print days, who I'd worked with. He had retired and I knew that he had a fair amount of money. He was quite creative as well. So I thought it was a really good fit. So, I approached him. He was really keen on it as well. So we went into partnership.

Ray:
And what did you need to do to this property to get it where you wanted or where it needed to be?

Tina:
Okay. So we had to do quite a lot of internal structures, obviously create rooms with on suites, and then have a theme around the hotel being a boutique hotel, every room was different. It had a swimming pool already, so we had to do some work on the swimming pool, create a restaurant area. But the start of the project, it was always about the land that it was in, it was built into a hill. And it was a small boutique hotel with nine rooms, but we actually went for planning. Our big plan was to go for planning for it to be a 32 bedroom hotel with an underground restaurant looking out over the hills, and it already had a gym and a pool but we expanded on that. So the idea was to buy the house, renovate it into a small hotel, build up the business, get planning for the expansion and then settle on the planning. So it would be the closest hotel to the airport, which was already expanding.

Ray:
So it sounds like you went into this feeling pretty confident about it. Like, the main challenge that was maybe just getting the money for it. But was there anything about the project that you were nervous about or you weren't sure how you were going to address?

Tina:
No, there wasn't anything. I knew that I could set up a business from scratch. We put managers in to run it, ‘cause obviously I'm not a hotelier. But no, I felt really confident. I thought it was a sure bet.

Ray:
So tell me how it unfolded, you know, when you started actually building and working on it.

Tina:
Okay. So we started this in 2006. We quickly got it up and running as a business and renovated. And we had all our plans drawn up and we actively started looking for buyers in 2007. And we had two buyers that were looking to pay between 3 and 4 million for this project, with them involved in doing the expansion. So it was all going great guns. We didn't actually have the planning, that was delayed, and that got delayed for various normal planning reasons. And in 2008, then the crash came and everyone went away and we hadn't yet secured our planning.

So in the UK, any major building works or changes, you have to go and apply for planning with a council, put in all your drawings and they then go through it all. And it did get planning in the end, but it just took a little bit longer than we anticipated.

Ray:
Got it. And you had some buyers lined up, you said — so before the project was done, you were searching for potential buyers?

Tina:
Yeah. We were searching for potential buyers and we had two potentials that were really, really interested.

Ray:
But then as you said, of course, the crash hit. So was that the big reason for the failure of this project?

Tina:
That and the financing of it, I think. Because when the crash hit at that point, we were — we only had a hotel with nine rooms. So the plan was never that a nine bedroom hotel would make lots of money. The plan was always about the additional 32 rooms. So it quickly became very difficult.

Our partners who were brought in decided to stop funding, we had to approach the bank for extra monies whilst we carried on to source this planning. We'd set the business up as a partnership rather than a limited company. So there was no way we could get out of it. In the end, we moved in as a family to run it, just to try and get us over that period of the crash. I lent — our borrowing was so high that the interest and everything with the bank that it was just, it just wasn't financially viable anymore. And in the end, the bank came in and just took over. They had too much of a say and then they sold it on for a massive loss.

Ray:
Wow. So, because it was a partnership you were personally liable. And you said your family had to move in. So you had to uproot your existence.

Tina:
We thought one of the ways whilst we were working through the immediate aftermath of the crash was to cut back like you do in any business. So our managers left and we moved in to run it. But no, it was just, it was just too much, just too much for us and the bank put us under immense pressure.

Ray:
Did your whole family move in or did you keep your original house?

Tina:
We kept our original house, we moved there and I think we moved in for a couple of months and it was just, it just wasn't viable running a hotel with two small children. My husband obviously had our, our online business as well and just everything was suffering really. And then, you know, it's a 24-hour job when you run a hotel.

Ray:
Wow. So you had a family, you had an online business, you're renovating or building this huge commercial project that's also an active hotel. So you have all these things happening and then the crash and all the financial pressure from the bank and all of this. Wow. That's — I can imagine that would be incredibly challenging to deal with all those things at the same time.

Tina:
Quite intense.

Ray:
So the bank was pressuring you to make payments and it was difficult or impossible to make those payments. And the bank, you said they just took possession of the property?

Tina:
Yeah, we had so many meetings with the bank and we wanted to trade through it. I didn't want to walk away from our investment. I didn't want to fail at anything, but the pressure was intense, is the only way to describe it. You know, we’d borrowed money on credit cards to pay our staff's wages. It was just a horrendous period in our life. And we got to the point where we just thought, you know, we don't have control over this anymore. And so we knew that we were personally responsible for the debt, but we just couldn't focus on it anymore so we walked away.

Ray:
And are you comfortable sharing the amount of money you were in debt?

Tina:
Oh yeah. Yeah, no. I mean, totally, out of the whole project, we lost half a million pounds.

Ray:
And you mentioned that you struggled with the idea of failing at this. And how long did it take for you to, I guess, give in or just realize that you weren't going to be able to come out on the other end of this?

Tina:
Quite a while. I said to you at the beginning, I’ve got quite a tenacious personality and I really didn't want to give up. But I had so, so many sleepless nights and the bank, it was like having an unwanted partner in it as well. We'd already fallen out with our business partners. There was tremendous strain everywhere and it just got to the point, I think probably we tried really hard for nearly 18 months to work through it. And it just got to a final point where I just felt it was better just to walk away from it and accept that we would carry this big debt. And I just thought we could put our energies into something positive to pay it off.

Ray:
And what did you feel in that moment when you realized or made the decision that you weren't going to be able to succeed with this project? Was it relief or something else?

Tina:
Relief. We've always — my husband and I, we've always talked through everything and thankfully we've got a really strong marriage. We didn't blame each other. We took total responsibility for what had gone on. We knew where we'd made our mistakes. And I'd say the biggest thing was we probably should have made that decision to walk away a lot earlier than we did.

Ray:
Was your husband also of the same mind that you should, you know, was he, is he as tenacious as you were about just kind of pushing through and sticking it out?

Tina:
Probably not quite as tenacious. He's a very positive person. And I think with us talking, that helped us both come to the decision to walk away and that it was just money and that our health and our wellbeing was much more important.

Ray:
So on that first day that you made a change of mind about how you were going to deal with this, what did you do? So what was the first thing you did when you felt that sense of relief and knew that what you had been doing wasn't working?

Tina:
I actually went to the bank, had a meeting with the bank, and told them that we were leaving and that we would take whatever was going to come to us. And that's exactly what we did. I left that meeting. Didn't, wouldn't go back. And that was that.

Ray:
So they took the property, I assume you still had some money that you needed to pay off?

Tina:
Yeah, there was quite a lot of debt with it. I've got to say for the next few months, I just hid, really. Making the decision to walk away was one thing. Being brave to take the responsibility and put an action plan in to solve the debt that had been built up was a totally other thing, really. To face that and to work out a way forward was really hard.

Ray:
And what did you need to do to put together that plan? Did you and your husband do it, or did you, did you seek help?

Tina:
I did quite a lot of research very late at night. You know, should I go bankrupt? What was the route forward for people with a lot of debt? I totally lost my confidence and just went into a shell really. And I was like that for a few months. Didn't know which way to turn. I did lots of listening to inspirational podcasts, and tried to build myself back up because I knew I couldn't hide from it. And I started volunteering for others to try and make myself feel better.

Ray:
That's great. And your husband was still running the online business?

Tina:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that business had taken quite a hit in time and growth. So I gradually started working in that and thought, well, you know, if we can make this work better than it is currently, then that will provide us an income to be able to work ourselves out of where we were at.

Ray:
And when did you realize that potentially building that business up could be helpful in getting you out of the predicament?

Tina:
Well, we'd been saying that for quite a few months. So it wasn't anything new. I just knew that I had to actually get on with it.

Ray:
And it sounds like you had a process of your own of grieving, just getting through what had happened with the hotel before you could, you know, be a hundred percent contributing to that business.

Tina:
I think you're dead right. You know, there is a grieving process. I felt embarrassed. I felt like a failure. I felt thankful in many ways, you know, we had great family support around us. Having two children made sure I got up every day. I think if I didn't have a family or anyone, I probably would have found it very hard to get out of bed every day, but I had to, so I guess the process was quicker for me.

Ray:
Well, I was going to ask how your kids handled all of this.

Tina:
At the time, they just thought oh, that was mum and dad's hotel. They, you know, they don't have it anymore, which I tried really hard to shield most of it from them. But your family you know, they know when you're not right. There was always an underlying issue that was an immense amount of stress around for quite a long time. But I tried to hide as much as I could from them.

Ray:
And as they've gotten older, have you shared more of what happened with them?

Tina:
Some more of it. Interestingly, the fact that it's still running as a hotel is quite interesting. Weirdly, they knew I was coming on to talk about this. So last night we sat and looked at all the photos of it online, and to see all of that hard work brought back lots of different memories for them.

I do have a regret that I think about most days, actually. But through everything that we went through, I think it had a lasting impact on my eldest daughter, because she has a very weird relationship with money now. Because she's seen us go from being really comfortable to having nothing and an extreme amount of pressure around us. And they're saying things like, “Oh, you know, we can't afford that. We're not having that. We're only having this tonight.” It's made her a bit weird about money and I would say that is my one biggest regret. And I'm trying to address that now by educating them both more about money. I think we all have a really weird relationship with money.

Ray:
Money is complicated.

Tina:
It's very complicated for sure. Out of all of it, I say that my one biggest regret is they came through that with me. It was my choice to take those risks. And I didn't think about the impact it had. All I was doing was looking at the end goal of privately educating them. And what's really strange is the school actually supported me all the way through it. So they knew what had happened to us. I was always very open with everybody who wanted to know what our position was and they actually helped us through their education. And I've just got one payment left on my youngest daughter's now, and we're done. So I achieved it, but in a very roundabout way.

Ray:
Yeah. That's great. You know, the one resource you still have is time and you still have that relationship with your daughters. And like you said, you're aware of how what happened to your family financially has affected the way your daughter thinks about money, but it's something that you still have a chance to address and work on.

Tina:
And I think it's, I think it's really good that they can see that you can fail at something as well. I think that will help them in their lives and that, you know, by sticking together and working really hard — because I do work really hard — but, they can see that you can get through it.

Ray:
That's great. That's great. So how long did it take you to climb out of the financial hole of the hotel failure?

Tina:
10 years.

Ray:
Wow. And was there a day when you looked at the balance sheet and you realized that you'd paid it off, or was it, you know, was there a celebration when that happened?

Tina:
Not really. The way — we chose not to go bankrupt because I have a couple of other properties as well that I run as a holiday lap, and I didn't want to lose them. I felt that I'd been punished enough. So we chose a longer route of paying off our debts. We emptied our pensions, and I don't feel — although that debt isn't owed anymore, I do think it's had a long lasting effect on our future and how we move forward. And I'm not quite, you know — I think in a couple of years time, once we've built up our nest egg, I'll then finally feel like I can relax.

Ray:
So do you, do you anticipate having to work later into your life than you did before? Or are you trying to set up more passive income streams? Like, what's your strategy now?

Tina:
Well, we definitely have always believed in passive income streams, and in recovery of earning income we've had a lot of clients and in our business now we want to have more products so that we can build up that passive income stream. So as for working longer, no, you know, I still think I've got a few years left in me yet. Alan, my husband's 12 years older than me. He'd like to retire tomorrow, but he can’t.

Ray:
Not yet, honey.

Tina:
Not yet. We took a bit of a diversion on the way, but, you know, we've learned lots from it.

Ray:
You had a little adventure.

Tina:
Yeah. Could call it that.

Ray:
So, I was wondering if we could reflect back a little bit and you know, this is kind of the classic question that gets asked when people share their failure story, which is what would you have done differently? Are there any things that really stand out for you?

Tina:
Oh gosh, yeah. I got a little list. I think our first error was that we did it solely for money. I’d never done anything in my life just for money, just for a reward. And I think that was a really big mistake. Secondly, I think having partners was wrong as well, the way the business was set up. And I did that out of greed really, because I knew that if it was a partnership, it had tax benefits and, and I think I was just really... I could only see the positives and thought I was on a real roll and thought it would be okay. So I wouldn't do that again.

And the biggest thing I think would be risk assess properly. I've always been self-employed and always gone with my gut. And if I was really true to listening to my gut, I should have risked assessed much better than I did. So those are the things that stand out immediately. And probably take responsibility for it. I should've made that decision to end it quicker than I did. I should have realized when enough was enough.

Ray:
Are there points looking back where you now see that you had chances to end it, that you perhaps were blinded by?

Tina:
Well, I think there's a point where you think you can power through it. And I should have taken a rain check and listened and taken time out rather than trying to power through and constantly try and find solutions. So I should have taken more time out and taken more advice, I think.

Ray:
And were you, did you have people in your life, in your circle who were giving you advice or could have given you advice that would have been helpful?

Tina:
I think that's a really difficult question, because when you start something that's not what you normally do, you have a lot of people around you that are quite negative for you to step out of your comfort zone, or they think you're quite maverick. So I wish I'd had a mentor group that I could have spoken through every stage, because someone that had been through what I'd been through would have probably stopped me a lot earlier. And I think that that's what I give to the small companies that we work with now. So I just think maybe it was just a lesson that I needed to learn.

Ray:
And so it sounds like you've become a mentor of sorts. Have you worked with companies where you've been able to share your experience and maybe divert them from, you know, making similar choices or ending up in a similar position as a result?

Tina:
So, a friend immediately comes to mind that had a print company, weirdly, that was, at a point where he was just constantly borrowing money and borrowing money and borrowing money in the hope that it would eventually be okay. And I think I really helped him. He sold his company for some money and is now employed by someone else and is much happier. Yeah, so I do think the lessons I've learned have helped.

Ray:
And what are some basic things that you would recommend people do to do their due diligence, if they're considering going into a partnership that's going to involve a big investment?

Tina:
Definitely find out as much as you possibly can about your partners. I would definitely seek legal advice on setting up a partnership. And really looking at the worst possible scenario. You know, I've always been really positive, and just thought that that'll be okay, I can work through that, whereas really — really do the numbers. I didn't do the numbers. I went on a wing and a prayer, really. And so really sit down and do the numbers and look at every scenario and then think if that worst case scenario happens, am I happy with that? Can I work through that? How does that affect the rest of my life?

Ray:
And how has your whole experience made you think about failing in general, whether it's with your current business as we just talked about, or other projects or in other aspects of life?

Tina:
I would say right now I feel like my wings have been clipped. I think I've got quite a high ... I like risk. I find it exciting. But I've dealt with a lot of guilt, shame, embarrassment, loneliness, over these last few years. And for now I'm okay that I failed. I think I've taken as many positives as I can from it and I feel okay about it. And my attitude moving forward is I am more cautious and I have to risk assess, because I know in my personality that I have that ability to power through and think that I can change everything. So I've learned, I would say, an awful lot about myself.

Ray:
And you mentioned guilt and shame. How have you worked with and worked through those emotions and those challenges?

Tina:
I think I felt guilty because I felt I'd let my family down. I felt shame because I don't know anyone that's failed at business in my circle of friends. The loneliness was really hard. And it was probably in my head, but I felt a lot of our friends didn't know how to deal with it. So we couldn't talk about it with anybody. So I found that particularly hard.

Ray:
And what was it that people struggled with?

Tina:
Well, someone said to me, “Oh, well, you know, you and your husband. Allen, you're just a power couple, you know, you're amazing at everything you do,” but they didn't know everything that was going on in the background. And it was, and it was almost brushed over, oh you've failed, you'll be okay. But the, the actual things, you know, some of the things, none of my family, or none of my friends know about it, but you know, like our parents bought our food for us, you know, we're in our forties and our fifties and our parents are doing our weekly shop for us because we can't put food on the table. I mean, those things, you can't share with everybody and no one really wants to hear it, either. They don't know how to deal with it or cope with it.

Ray:
So was that something that you did try to share with friends or you just didn't feel like you wanted to or could?

Tina:
I think one of the things that I've learned out of this is everyone's perception of not having any money is really different. Someone might say, or, you know, if I said to you, I couldn't afford to put a meal on the table, you probably wouldn't believe that because it's not real. You don't think that that is real in this day and age. But I couldn't, you know. I sold jewelry. I sold loads of things that we had. I did everything I could to try and keep a living going. And I think that that's not comprehensible for a lot of people.

Ray:
So what was it like getting back into the online business? It sounds like your husband had been the main, kind of caretaker runner of that business. So you were involved in it, I assume more than you had been ever before, is that correct? So what were you doing with the business when you got into it?

Tina:
Probably more client-facing, which was good. So I spent a lot of time doing what I'd always done, if you like, in print in organizing the production, you know, from concept, right. The way through to getting, building a website and getting a client's email newsletter. So I spent a lot of time working on the production really, which was my comfort zone — planning and organizing is my comfort zone.

Ray:
And so were you able to grow the business?

Tina:
Yeah, we've grown it really well, actually. So we took it from a business that had only a handful of clients right the way through, we've pivoted a couple of times as well. And I think having worked in something that's not worked out, it gives you the confidence to pivot. So yeah, no, we've got a great business, we've got some fantastic clients. We're now looking at, you know, with the recent pandemic, we’re now looking at producing our own products. So yeah, no, I feel really comfortable in this business and have no desire to go into the hotel business.

Ray:
What kinds of pivots have you made?

Tina:
Well, when I left the hotel and came into the business, we were predominantly a website-building company who dabbled in email marketing. But we quickly went full into email marketing and in 2014, we went into launching products.

Ray:
Very cool. And where are you, like where do you see the business going in the next few years? Are you hoping to just build your client base or offer different new services and products?

Tina:
At the moment we're looking at offering our own product. So we are going to be offering short courses to help people launch their own products. I do quite a lot of mentoring, as I said at the beginning, and a lot of that is with small business. So I can see a bigger picture around a business, not just a product. So I think with a lot of our clients who are small, we offer them more than just a transaction, if you like. We try and get really involved in their business and help them plan their thoughts and where they're going.

Ray:
Is that the volunteer work that you mentioned that you started doing?

Tina:
Yes. I mean, I started volunteering in charity shops initially. I did an awful lot of fundraising. My nephew’s actually got cerebral palsy and one of the biggest things I did that helped my confidence was I got involved in a project to raise 1.5 million for a hydrotherapy pool, and we were really successful and that really helped me. So it helped him and helped lots of others as well. And I'm still actually on that board, that charity board. But that was, that was a two way street. It helped me regain some of that confidence I’d lost, but it's made a massive difference to a lot of children. And I think we've taken that into our company as well. We know that marketing, it's not going to set the world alight, but we want to work with people that can make a difference to others.

Ray:
Well, Tina, thank you so much for joining us on Flops. It's been great to hear your story and that you and your family have come through on the other side and you've learned some things, but yeah. Thanks for, thanks for sharing with us.

Tina:
Thank you for having me.

Karen:
Ray, something that really struck me in that interview is when Tina and Alan went to the bank and told them they were walking away from the whole situation, and that they would take responsibility for whatever the consequences were. I just thought that was really brave.

Ray:
Definitely brave, and a lot of things stuck with me from that interview, but one of the things that really stood out was this idea of what we learn from our elders and what we pass on down the line. And Tina talked about from an early point in her life, when she was in college, and seeing her mom running her own business, and Tina was just fascinated by this idea of being in control of your own destiny. So there was kind of this inheritance of that entrepreneurial passion

And it was really poignant in our conversation, hearing about essentially what Tina passed down her own family line as a result of her ambition, and passion, and of this failure experience in terms of how it affected their daughter's attitude toward money. And that's probably not the inheritance that Tina and Alan would have intended. But, of course that story is still being written, and who knows how it'll evolve and turn out, and there's still time for them to shape it together as a family.

Karen:
Sure. Yeah. Her story is a lesson in how failure can have lasting effects and can change our view of money and success.

But I'm glad Tina and her family are on the way to recovering from that huge loss.

Ray:
Yeah.

Karen:
Well to close out the show today, we have a special guest. Our colleague, Mindy, is here to talk about a story of failure, and we're so excited to have Mindy. She's our solutions manager at SPI. And Mindy, we want to hear your story.

Mindy Holahan Peters:
Yes. Okay. Let me paint the picture for you. Let's see, I would have been about 28 years old, probably. Yeah. 28, 29 years old. I was working for a set of conference centers in the city of Philadelphia. So we had these beautiful facilities that companies will rent out for their meetings. And one of the locations had this beautiful hallway. It was designed to be really reflective to get the outside light coming in all the way to the front of the center. So it's down this silver hallway and all of the conference rooms lining that hallway didn't have external windows, which is why it had this sort of beautiful shining hallway to pull the light in from either side of the hallway into those rooms. And they all had these floor to ceiling glass walls and glass doors. It was all glass. And then there were shades you could pull if you wanted to shut out the world, but all this beautiful glass.

And so for this particular morning, and they were always morning and I was not a morning person, I had gone to the front desk, printed out a bunch of reports, and I was shuffling through my stack of reports as I walked down the hall. And I turned right into the conference room, and in front of the entire sales team, I walked smack into the glass wall, hit my head, bounced off the wall, landed on the floor, left a big greasy forehead print—

Ray:
Mindy-shaped marks.

Mindy:
—on the wall in front of the whole sales team. It was fantastic in that it was quite the entrance. I got everybody's attention except for Bill. Bill was one of our sales managers, and he was so angry that he was looking down and typing and he missed the whole thing.

Karen:
So wait, how many people are in this room as you hit the glass?

Mindy:
Yeah. So it would have been about eight people. Eight people at that time was maybe like a third of the company, including the two owners. The two owners were there, the whole sales team. Yeah, it was pretty great. I hit it like a bird on a window.

Ray:
You were okay, right? I mean, you didn't get hurt? Hopefully?

Mindy:
One of our owners was trained in field first aid and he assessed me to see if I had a concussion.

Ray:
Did he whip out his little flashlight and check your pupils?

Mindy:
Trying to make sure that I hadn't hurt myself badly. I did not have a concussion. Although in retrospect, maybe I could have used that as a way to get a day off, but nope. I just tried to pick myself up both sort of physically and metaphorically, and just go on with the meeting, share my reports, and be my usual enthusiastic self, if you will.

Karen:
When you walked into the conference room, was everyone just kind of awkward or was everyone laughing?

Mindy:
No, oh, they found it hilarious.

Karen:
Okay.

Mindy:
Hilarious. Yes. No, it was very funny.

Ray:
Did they find it hilarious after they knew you were okay, or was it like, immediately hilarious? You're like, "I need to not work here anymore."

Mindy:
I think it was immediately hilarious. Oh my goodness. The number of embarrassments... if that's enough to take me out, boy, am I in trouble. The curse of being a bouncy, enthusiastic person is that sometimes you bounce into the wrong things.

Ray:
There you go. Well, it's too bad you didn't have a basket of eggs.

Mindy:
Or a pie? A nice merengue pie to smash in my face.

Ray:
That would've probably been the perfect slapstick failure story.

Mindy:
A big tray of glassware, which would not have been out of the realm of possibility there.

Ray:
Well, the moral of the story, then it seems, is that you should always go with the glass cleaning company that has three and a half stars on Yelp, not the five star.

Mindy:
Right, right!

Ray:
Because you don't want your floor to ceiling windows to be too clean.

Mindy:
And if you do make a big disaster like that, just get up bow like you meant it, and go on with your day.

Ray:
Make sure you don't have a concussion, and then go on with your day. Love it.

Karen:
Well, Mindy, thank you for sharing your embarrassing story with us. And you're welcome to come back at any time to share more. If you have more.

Mindy:
I will be sure to go out into the world and do more embarrassing things.

Ray:
Yeah, go crazy.

Mindy:
I can bring them back.

Karen:
There you go. Thank you so much.

Ray:
Thanks, Mindy.

Karen:
Well, that's it for this episode of Flops. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time.

Ray:
Peace.

Thanks for listening to Flops. For more information on today’s episode, including links and show notes, please visit SmartPassiveIncome.com/flops.

Special thanks to Tina Cheesley for joining us on today’s episode. Learn more about her and her husband, Alan’s, business, Flow Online, by visiting Flow-Online.co.uk.

Join us next week for a dance through the mystical and dangerous Forest of Unsigned Contracts.

Your hosts are me, Ray Sylvester, and Karen Beattie.

Flops is a production of SPI Media.

Our executive producer is Matt Gartland, and our series producers are David Grabowski and Senior Producer Sara Jane Hess.

Writing by Ray Sylvester and Karen Beattie.

Editing and sound design by Paul Grigoras.

Music by David Grabowski.

See you next time!